18 February 2022

It's the end of our first FULL week of the school term and lots of action has been happening in, out and around our place. I use those words deliberately as I think that one of the special features of our school is that we do try hard to learn ubiquitously. To place our learning within our immediate environment and its surrounding concentric circles.

Being close to bush and beach, its flora and fauna, combined with the history of our place, Whetūkairangi, naturally brings us great gifts for our science and social sciences, NZ histories and Te Aō Māori learning especially.

Then we have Miramar and the City with all its riches not far away and all of the people, expertise, interests and passions to connect with to provide our children with a truly unique primary schooling. The thing is we need to relook at this every 4-5 years as things change, people/businesses move in and move out, passions grow and change and so do our children and our parent community.

For this reason, one of our chunky goals for this year is to review our current local curriculum. John McDougall (for those of you who don't know John, he's the teacher in the seniors who people confuse for the groundsman on occasion as he does such a great job with the compost and gardens!) is going to be taking the lead on this project. So we will be communicating via the Newsletter to pull you in on this venture too.

Our school story is a strong one - so we want to be able to share it, continuously build it, improve it and move it forwards.... grounding it firmly in the past but relevant for the future. Once we have a clear pathway of when and how, we will let you know.

Just so you know, each school creates its unique curriculum, relevant to place/community. That's why every school in New Zealand is a bit different from each other. However, we all follow the NZ National Curriculum as our umbrella - so we can't go way off the map!

The National Curriculum is being reviewed in stages over the next few years so, whatever our place-based piece ends up looking like, it will be flexible enough to deal with any potential change. Exciting stuff!